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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Vatican City, 17 June 2015 (VIS) –
Bereavement in the family was the theme of Pope Francis' catechesis
during this Wednesday's general audience in St. Peter's Square,
attended by more than fifteen thousand people.

“Death is an experience that affects
all families, without exception. It is part of life; however, when it
touches someone close to us, it never appears natural to us. For
parents, the loss of a child … is an affront to the promises, gifts
and sacrifices of love joyfully offered to the life we have brought
into being. The whole family is paralysed, silenced. And a child
suffers something similar when he or she is left alone by the loss of
one or both parents. The emptiness and abandonment that opens up
inside the child is even more distressing on account of the fact that
he does not have the sufficient experience to 'give a name' to what
has happened. In these cases death is like a black hole that opens up
in the life of families, for which we are unable to give any
explanation. And at times we even reach the point of blaming God”.

“But many people – and I understand
them – become angry with God, and blaspheme. 'Why have you taken my
son, my daughter from me? There is no God, God does not exist! Why
has He done this to me?'. But this anger arises from great pain; the
loss of a son or a daughter, a father or mother, is an immense pain.
… In these cases, death seems like a hole”.

But physical death, the Pope warned,
has “accomplices” that are even worse: “hatred, envy, pride and
greed, the sin of the world that works for death and renders it even
more painful and unjust. Family ties appear to be the predestined and
helpless victims of these powerful auxiliaries of death that
accompany human history. Think of the absurd 'normality' with which,
in certain moments and in certain places, the events that add horror
to death are provoked by the hatred and indifference of other human
beings. May the Lord free us from growing accustomed to this”.

Thanks to God's compassion given to us
in Jesus, “many families demonstrate in their actions that death
does not have the last word. Every time that a bereaved family –
even terribly – finds the strength to keep the faith and love that
unite us to those whom we love, it prevents death from claiming
everything. The darkness of death must be faced with more intense
love. In the light of the Resurrection of the Lord, Who never
abandons any of those whom the Father has entrusted to Him, we can
remove the 'sting' from death, as the apostle Paul said; we can
prevent it from poisoning life, from spoiling our affections, from
making us fall into the darkest emptiness. In this faith, we are able
to console each other, knowing that the Lord has defeated death once
and for all. Our dear ones have not disappeared into the darkness of
nothing: hope assures us that they are in the good and strong hands
of God. Love is stronger than death”, the Pope emphasised. If we
let ourselves be supported by this faith, “the experience of
bereavement can generate a stronger solidarity in family ties, a new
openness to the suffering of other families, a new fraternity with
those families who are born and reborn in hope”.

Faith gives us birth and rebirth in
hope, reiterated Francis, recalling the passage from the Gospel in
which Jesus revives the widower's son, restoring him to his mother.
“This is our hope”, he exclaimed. “Jesus will restore to us all
our dear ones who have passed away, He will return them to us and we
will meet them again. … Let us remember this gesture of Jesus …
as the Lord will do the same with the loved ones in our family”.
This faith, he said, “protects us from a nihilistic vision of
death, as well as from the false consolations of the world, 'so that
the Christian truth does not risk mixing itself with myths of various
types'”, giving way to rites of superstition, ancient or modern”.

The Pope concluded by urging all
pastors and all Christians to express in the most concrete way the
sense of faith in relation to the family experience of bereavement.
“The right to weep must not be denied”, he exclaimed. “Even
Jesus was deeply moved and profoundly troubled by the bereavement of
a family he loved. We can, instead, draw from the simple and powerful
witness of many families who have known how to grasp, in the
difficult passage of death, also the safe passage offered by the
Lord, crucified and risen, with his irrevocable promise of the
resurrection of the dead. The work of God's love is stronger than the
work of death. We must seek to be 'accomplices' to that love, with
our faith. … Death was defeated by Jesus on the cross. Jesus will
restore all of us to our families”.